Why I Moved from Okinawa to Nakatsu, Oita

What’s up, peeps! Haruka from Gut Chef Japan here. 👋

Today, I want to share why I made the decision to move from Okinawa to Nakatsu, Oita. I've mentioned the move on social media, but there are parts of the story I've never shared before.

Before I dive in, let me introduce myself. I'm originally from Tochigi Prefecture, about 1.5 hours north of Tokyo. I lived there until I was 18, and since then I've called many places home, including England, Saitama, Tokyo, Vancouver, and Okinawa. You could say I've moved around quite a bit!

After graduating from an international university in Tokyo with a degree in business, I worked as a software engineer. Later, I became a professional holistic health blogger, then started my online health coaching business. Over time, my work evolved into hosting group cooking experiences and half-day private retreats in Okinawa. Today, I host private Japanese fermentation experiences and a Japanese Fermented Foods Practitioner Certificate Course here in Nakatsu, Oita.

My husband, Harrison, and I lived in Okinawa until April 2026. Moving to Oita wasn't something we had been planning for years. In fact, the idea only came to me in December 2025, and within four months we had made it happen.

What's even more surprising is that neither of us had really explored Kyushu before. Before our trip to Oita in February 2026, we had never spent meaningful time there and had no plans to move.

Yet something about that visit completely changed our perspective.

So, how did we go from living in Okinawa to settling in Nakatsu, Oita? Let me share the story. We lived in Okinawa in a total of 3.5 years and it was one of my dream to live somewhere warm by the beach at least in my life and we pretty much enjoyed our time in Okinawa.

There are mainly 3 reasons why we moved out of the island.

1. Okinawa's laid-back culture became challenging in a business setting

When people think of Okinawa, they often think of warm weather, beautiful beaches, and a relaxed lifestyle. In many ways, that's true. Life moves at a slower pace, and people generally seem less concerned with keeping up appearances than in larger cities.

I enjoyed that aspect of Okinawa at first, but I started seeing the downside when I began building my business and searching for venues to host my experiences.

My first venue was a village-run public kitchen. Everything seemed fine until, after a few events, I received a call from the village office informing me that the facility wasn't actually supposed to be rented out on weekends.

Next, I spent over a month discussing the possibility of using a vacant elementary school through a company managing the property. Just when things seemed to be moving forward, they changed their mind and told me there was no guarantee they could install air conditioning, making the space unsuitable for hosting guests.

After that, I began using a community centre for my half-day retreats. While it worked for a while, I frequently ran into scheduling conflicts with other community events and eventually realised that I needed a dedicated space that I could rely on.

Finally, I moved my business to a house I found through a friend. It felt like I had finally found a long-term solution. However, a few months later, when I tried to formalize the arrangement with an official contract, issues arose between the person managing the property and the owner. As a result, I unexpectedly lost the space.

The village I lived in was very rural, but even when we lived in Nago, the larger city next to Ogimi Village, we often heard similar stories from local business owners. People would tell us things like, "Just when my business was starting to do well, the landlord dramatically increased the rent and I lost my location," or "After spending money renovating a rented property, the owner suddenly decided they wanted the house back."

All of this happened within a single year. As soon as my business shifted from being fully online to requiring a physical venue, I found myself constantly dealing with uncertainty. It became increasingly difficult to trust that a space would still be available a few months later, and I never felt like my business had a secure foundation.

2. I didn't want my work to be limited to the "Blue Zone" story

Okinawa, particularly the village we lived Ogimi was known for “longevity village” where they were descent amount of foreign tousrists visiting our village wanting to know the secret of living a healthy lifestyle.

3. Finding a home for our business was much harder than we expected